[3477] in Release_7.7_team
PWOG updates - list of topics
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Camilla R Fox)
Wed Sep 11 14:51:19 2002
Message-Id: <200209111851.OAA19949@red-herring.mit.edu>
To: release-team@MIT.EDU
Date: Wed, 11 Sep 2002 14:51:17 -0400
From: Camilla R Fox <cfox@MIT.EDU>
Here's a list of things that we might want to think about addressing
in some way. Details are needed, and decisions need to be made about
what's supported and what isn't.
Section 1.1.1:
The existance of zero cost Athena should be acknoledged. It should be
noted that most hardware supported by RedHat should work, but won't be
supported by Hotline.
Section 3:
The adding a new disk stuff is sun specific; that's probably ok.
A note about disk partitioning on PC systems would be useful, though.
This might be a good place to mention that dual boot systems exist, and
to outline the differences between lilo and grub, and how to use each of
them to configure a dual boot system. (We can punt on documenting lilo,
if we document how to switch to grub.)
Booting single user mode off of recovery media might be beyond scope;
it is, however, a much more frequently asked question under Linux,
because it's much easier to destroy your boot partition.
X configuration, to the extent of "login on a console as root and
run Xconfigurator" should be mentioned; sometimes it's necessary to
boot single user mode to do this, if X is respawning too fast, and no
virtual consoles are enabled. (Or is this a bug? If you install, and
the installer doesn't dtrt, then X respawns too fast, and you can't get
a login, because xlogin never runs.)
Enabling virtual consoles is pretty much supported (legacy from the
SIPB installer), so editing /etc/inittab to do this should be mentioned.
(Or does this go under "customising via software"?)
Section 4:
It should be acknoledged that installing extra RPMs on a RedHat system
will generally work. Care should be taken not to break dependancies,
or to install packages available elsewhere on Athena.
Users need to be cautioned against building their own kernel, or changing
kernel versions.
Section 4.4:
/etc/athena/access should be suggested in favor of adding users to
/etc/passwd.
Section 6:
All the stuff about running track doesn't apply to linux; there's an
rpmupdate invocation that could be used to tell the user what extra RPMs
are installed.
All the stuff about attaching packs doesn't apply to linux.
/srvd/update_ws doesn't work on linux, because there's no srvd; the
correct invocation is just update_ws, with an argument of the release
number, for a full release.
The "when updates affect customisations" section needs to include a
description of how the release updates RPMs that are not included as part
of the Athena release by default, but which are updated by RedHat (the
release should just update them, but not if redhat has renamed them).
How the release updates an SMP kernel is also a commonly asked question
(it works).
Users need to be reminded that if they install extra RPMs, and an update
fails due to rpmupdate dependancy errors, they will do best to uninstall
their RPMs, then try the release again.
